My Patented* At-Home Writing Retreat

*This is a blatant lie, I haven’t patented shit.

In my last post, I fully intended to include details about my at-home writing retreat, but then I got sidetracked making excuses for myself and ranting about pens, so here we are.

What you see here is Page One of my beautiful (thanks, Canva) retreat brochure. In it, I have broken my days into hour-long chunks, from 10am (because I’m non-functional before then on a weekend) and 7pm (because any later than that feels unrealistic).

You’ll notice a few things here, perhaps the most egregious of which is that I’ve included tasks so simple a labrador should know to do them, like GET UP. SHOWER. BRUSH TEETH. TURN ON PC.

In fact, you might notice I’ve given myself an entire hour to do these things. Well, that’s entirely intentional. For one thing, what’s the point of a To Do List if you don’t have some tasks on it that are incredibly easy to tick off, giving yourself that much-needed dose of ill-gotten serotonin before your first Proper Task begins?

For another, I have a truly terrible habit of zoning out and not doing what I’m meant to be doing unless I have a strict timeline in which to do it. This is true with anything involving an Excel spreadsheet in my day-job, and it’s equally true of cooking lunch and eating it like a normal, well-functioning human being. Last Wednesday I didn’t eat or drink so much as a sip of water until 2pm, not because I didn’t have food, but because I was zoned into my day job and I didn’t have a reminder anywhere that actually, I get migraines when I don’t eat.

This is Sunday’s offering — same deal, I’ve split my day into hours and given each hour a task, or a couple of mini-tasks to get done within an hour.

I’ve added some movement into my days here. I’m not a small woman, and part of my “zoning out” issue is that I can also sit entirely still for hours at a time, playing games, reading a book, or writing, and it’s not good for me. So I had to add that into my list.

Also, housework, because I’m not yet successful enough to live in one of those houses you see in TikTok ads with so many gadgets cleaning things you might as well have a robot butler. God, I’d love a robot butler.

Putting some washing on and doing the washing up as part of my day will mean I still feel “on top of it” at the end of the weekend, resulting in fewer shame spirals about the state of my flat, because that can lead to… you guessed it… writer’s block.

I’m not suggesting this approach will work for everyone. It works for me because I’ve taken all of MY priorities and shunted them into Canva to develop these. I couldn't live like this every day, or to be honest every weekend either, but every once in a while, this is a way for me to get into my writing, get a chunk of stuff done without looking up on Monday night and realising I haven’t washed in 3 days and there are no clean plates left. Because, as unfortunate a truth as this is, some weekends that is what happens.

The way I handle my “write 500 word” tasks, which are of course the most important feature of these lists, is that I put my phone on Do Not Disturb, get a soft soundscape going in my headphones (nothing with lyrics, that’s distracting, but also without any noise I’ll be distracted by the busy road outside and whatever my boyfriend happens to be doing in the flat), and set my PC to “focus mode” for 30 minutes. I can easily write 500 words in 30 minutes, and then the other 30 minutes is for quickly reading back over it and making immediate edits, or even setting another 30 minute timer if I’m In the Right Mood.

Here’s my Monday list — which concludes with “set goals for coming week”. Sometimes that means “create a list of scenes you want to write over the next few days in 30 minute chunks” and sometimes it means “reminder you’re busy until next Saturday again”. But having it here closes the weekend off nicely, just as “review writing goals for the weekend” opens it. Cyclical, see?

Also, “household admin”. Like, ordering groceries, checking the gas and electric metres (I don't actually do this, but I have to remind someone to do it), putting our Who Gives A Crap order on pause because how much toilet paper do they think two people get through in a 3-month window!?

I wouldn’t do that stuff if it wasn’t on the list, a Future Jess would hate me.

So then, if I’m successful at sticking to these lists (and none of these tasks should take an hour! So I usually have flex time which feels good!), then at the end of a 3-day sprint I will have a minimum of 7,000 new words in my manuscript. Given my total novel will likely work out at around the 100k mark, that sometimes feels like a drop in the ocean. But it’s a much bigger drop than doing nothing at all. And it fits in with my life. And it gets me back into the story so I can keep writing in short bursts throughout the week after (migraines and day job permitting).

Like I said, this won’t work for everyone, but it’s not meant to. Hopefully it might inspire someone to look at the realities of their available writing time and come up with something for themselves, because I’d like that.